I like wearing clothes. They keep me warm and get me around campus without strange looks. Sometimes, if they’re clean, they garner those “how-you-doin’?” looks from the opposite sex. But right now, to make a political statement, I am typing in the nude. I publicly offer up my private nudity to draw attention to an issue I am struggling with-an issue everyone recognizes as a problem. This issue is greater than whether I should wear my collar up “popped” (for those in the know) or down (like normal people).

The issue is whether I feel comfortable wearing clothes made in a sweatshop. And by “made in a sweatshop,” I mean made through the blood, sweat and tears of young women, men and children all over the world.

I think most people would agree that asking a young woman to work for two months with no days off, for 16-hour days with one bathroom break, so that corporations can save $0.50 per shirt, is inhumane. However, many people feel there is little they can do other than boycott Wal-Mart. While I do not want to wear sweatshop clothes, I in no way support a boycott.

So, what else can you do? Read on, educate yourself and take a stand.

On Sept. 28, 2005, members of United Students Against Sweatshops (http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/), an international network of student-labor activists, developed a plan for colleges and universities to require licensees such as Nike, Reebok and Adidas to produce collegiate apparel at “sweat-free” factories. USAS defines “sweat-free” factories as factories where workers’ right to organize is respected.

Student activists have found that sweatshop production of collegiate apparel is still rampant from El Salvador to Haiti, as well as in the United States. In factories where workers have struggled to protect their basic rights through union representation and collective bargaining, there has been tremendous success. However, students have found that university policies and independent monitoring have not been sufficient to support workers’ gains. Apparel brands consistently shift orders out of good factories, shutting them down in the face of workers organizing for their rights. This business is then moved to other factories with even cheaper wages and fewer recognized workers’ rights.

According to the students’ demands, universities would be required to source apparel from factories that have demonstrated respect for workers’ associational rights. The brands would be required to pay an increased price to supplier factories in order to enable workers to negotiate a living wage relative to their national standard of living. The Workers’ Rights Consortium (http://www.workersrights.org) will enforce and monitor this policy.

The purpose of the Workers’ Rights Consortium, as stated in its mission statement, is to “assist in the enforcement of manufacturing Codes of Conduct adopted by colleges and universities; these Codes are designed to ensure that factories producing clothing and other goods bearing college and university names respect the basic rights of workers.” The WRC works with labor rights experts to investigate factory conditions. Where human rights violations are uncovered, the WRC works with colleges and universities, U.S.-based retail corporations and local workers to correct the problem. WRC affiliation requires that a school adopt a Code of Conduct similar to the WRC’s (which Saint Louis University has done) and pay annual affiliation fees of either $1,000 or 1 percent of gross licensing revenues, whichever is greater.

On a recent search through the bookstore, I found one shirt that was made in the United States. All the other sweatshirts, shirts, shorts, hats, pants and jackets were made in Third World countries, such as Honduras, Lesotho, Guatemala, Peru, Fiji, Cambodia, Madagascar, Korea and Colombia. Of the countries mentioned, not even Mexico has a good history if protecting workers rights.

Currently on SLU’s campus a group of motivated students has started a chapter of USAS. Part of our mission statement is that we “work to ensure human rights and economic justice for working peoples worldwide. We promote awareness through education and direct action in harmony with Catholic social teaching and the Jesuit ideals of solidarity, human dignity, and service to others.” We see a strong need for SLU to take into account its goal of creating students who are “Men and Women for Others” by paying greater attention to our economic impact on the global market.

This concept was more clearly defined by the current Father General of the Society of Jesus, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, at a national gathering at Santa Clara University in 2000:

“The real measure of our Jesuit universities lies in who our students become. Tomorrow’s ‘whole person’ cannot be whole without a well-educated solidarity. We must therefore raise our Jesuit educational standard to ‘educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world.'”

We believe there is a clear connection between the mission statement of Saint Louis University and our need to end economic and social oppression. A step toward this goal as a University is to affiliate with the Workers’ Rights Consortium. But, as LeVar Burton would say, “Don’t take my word for it.” Ask Boston College, Loyola University-Chicago, Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University or Yale University. These colleges and universities, as well as 138 others, have affiliated with the WRC and are pleased with their effectiveness in upholding workers’ rights.

Or, ask your student government. Three years running, they have passed a resolution requesting that President Biondi and his President’s Coordinating Council agree to affiliate with the WRC. Three years running, our administration has stalled efforts to affiliate, questioned the effectiveness of the WRC, ignored the student body’s petitions and failed to give a firm response.

We, the members of SLUUSAS, ask our University community, its student leaders and our administration to take another step forward for justice, to make one more (fully-clothed) effort to increase economic equality in the world and to lend their support in our efforts to convince the President’s Coordinating Council to affiliate with the WRC by the end of this year. We ask for your support by signing our petition, writing letters to President Biondi and other administrators and staying aware of current issues. Look for more efforts on this matter in the near future.

We would rather be naked than wear sweatshop clothing, but maybe you would rather us just affiliate with the WRC. So, help us out, and we promise to keep our clothes on, collar popped or not.

John Carroll is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences